When to turn off my External Hard Drive

[Cantera]

I leave my External Hard Drive on all the time. When i shut down my pc, i wait for the PC to shut down before i flip the off button on my External.

A mate of mine was at my place last week and he reckoned that I should put the Hard Drive off before i Shut Down.

Is there a difference?

When do you turn your External Drive off?

 

[PilgrimToHyperion]

I use USB Safely Remove before I switch off. Don't know if it's worth it, but sure as hell makes me sleep a bit better. Give it a try.

 

[chickenbeef]

I also use the safe removal thing

Doesn't seem to work though, if i put the HDD on and then pc, it will still run chkdsk on the drive. If i put the drive internally there's no problem

 

[AnomalyNexus]

I leave my External Hard Drive on all the time. When i shut down my pc, i wait for the PC to shut down before i flip the off button on my External.

A mate of mine was at my place last week and he reckoned that I should put the Hard Drive off before i Shut Down.

Is there a difference?

When do you turn your External Drive off?

You are doing it right. When the OS shuts down it flushes the write buffers which is effectively the same as safely remove.

If you want to switch of the HDD before the PC then you must do the safely remove thing.

My external drive doesn't power button, so I shut it down the PC and then flip the power switch that kills the juice to everything. Generally hdds don't get physical damage from losing power...they have mechanisms to ensure that the hdd head lands safely. The main thing to think about is file system integrity, hence safely remove.

 

[PeterCH]

You are doing it right. When the OS shuts down it flushes the write buffers which is effectively the same as safely remove.

If you want to switch of the HDD before the PC then you must do the safely remove thing.

My external drive doesn't power button, so I shut it down the PC and then flip the power switch that kills the juice to everything. Generally hdds don't get physical damage from losing power...they have mechanisms to ensure that the hdd head lands safely. The main thing to think about is file system integrity, hence safely remove.

If you have the Drive caching set to "Optimize for Quick Removal" you should not even have to do the Safely Remove USB thing. I always do it anyway if I detach the drive, otherwise I shut down the PC. I have all my ext devices in the "Optimise for Quick Removal" mode which prevents write behind caching and may make the drive a bit slower but anyhow it seems fast enough for me.

 

[AnomalyNexus]

If you have the Drive caching set to "Optimize for Quick Removal" you should not even have to do the Safely Remove USB thing.

Completely forgot about that feature.

Pretty sure it could still screw an NTFS filesystem if its removed at an inopportune time though. The journal system *should* catch it but its not something I'm gonna try.

anyhow it seems fast enough for me.

I doubt that the speed changed much. Drive write speed is fixed irrespective of what software tricks MS might employ.

 

[PeterCH]

Completely forgot about that feature.

Pretty sure it could still screw an NTFS filesystem if its removed at an inopportune time though. The journal system *should* catch it but its not something I'm gonna try.


I doubt that the speed changed much. Drive write speed is fixed irrespective of what software tricks MS might employ.

You ever run under DOS with SMARTDRV enabled and disabled?
I assure you file deletion and renaming is 100x faster with caching. File copying is also faster. How it works is that instead of reading a bit, writing a bit, it reads a lot and then writes that lot, that tends to speed things up.

Under DOS, deleting a directory of 200 files would take about 10min, with caching enabled, it would delete those files in under 1 sec.

 

[PilgrimToHyperion]

Under DOS, deleting a directory of 200 files would take about 10min, with caching enabled, it would delete those files in under 1 sec.

Ah.. showing your age PeterCH. I remember the wonder of a small utility called Ncache back in the day. Did wonders for DOS!

 

[bekdik]

I leave my External Hard Drive on all the time. When i shut down my pc, i wait for the PC to shut down before i flip the off button on my External.

A mate of mine was at my place last week and he reckoned that I should put the Hard Drive off before i Shut Down.

Is there a difference?

When do you turn your External Drive off?

Shutdown comouter then power off drive
Poweron drive then startup computer.

OS will flush any cached writes as part of its shutdown procedure.

 

[killadoob]

Has anyone here ever damaged an external drive or usb stick by just pulling it out like i do?

I never use the safe remove thing and i have never had a single problem.

 

[Sting]

Has anyone here ever damaged an external drive or usb stick by just pulling it out like i do?

I never use the safe remove thing and i have never had a single problem.

USB sticks - Yes.
HDDs - No.

 

[AnomalyNexus]

You ever run under DOS with SMARTDRV enabled and disabled?

Nope. Largely before my time.

How it works is that instead of reading a bit, writing a bit, it reads a lot and then writes that lot, that tends to speed things up.

Surely the drive itself has builtin cache to prevent bit by bit reading?

If you say its slower then I believe you, just don't see the reason why its like that.

Has anyone here ever damaged an external drive or usb stick by just pulling it out like i do?

Lost files on NTFS drive. Never physical damage.